Milk Jugs

Words by Violet Carol

In her poem “Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath described her pregnant body as “a melon strolling on two tendrils.” I would’ve described mine as two melons the size of planets collapsing my tendrils. In other words, my boobs were enormous enough to create their own orbits. But for the first time in my life, now two years postpartum and thirty-three years old, I’ve finally come down to Earth and made peace with them.

When I was in the third grade, my parents took me to the doctor to figure out why I had mysterious nodules growing out of my chest. It turns out they were “breast buds.” By eleven, I was in my first Victoria’s Secret bra, a beige-colored racerback that I wore out until the straps ripped to shreds. And by fourteen, I had myself a pair of Double-Ds bursting forth from my pale green Aéropostale graphic tee.

Popular culture will have you believe that big boobs are an aesthetic bodily privilege. But when you’re walking home from the bus stop after a long day of eighth grade algebra, the sudden zing of the male gaze feels more violative than desired. Before I even started high school, I had curves in places my innocence melted and I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t feel grown up because no one took me seriously; men called me a kid but gawked at me like I wasn’t. Pair my new knockers with a sub-rural religious Floridian swamp and the women were also coming for me. Everything looks immodest when you have a giant rack! I was envious of anyone whose body could hide beneath their clothing. T-shirt? Slob. Scoop top? Harlot. Being? Ripe in all the right places that somehow felt so wrong. I wanted to apologize for my contradictory existence.

Youth soccer saved my confidence, and I fell in love with movement because it didn’t care what form I took. I carried an athlete’s ego through college when I finally felt grown enough to embrace the body I was carrying, everything perky and proud through a decade of wild youth and adventures through love and eventually into marriage.  

Then I got pregnant. 

I heard about all the benefits of Pregnancy Boobs, but I reaped none of them. I did not gain a cute cup size of juicy mango essence. I instead gained two kettlebells that could knock anyone out who uttered, “Just you wait until your milk comes in!”

I gave birth via cesarean section in June of 2024 and my milk indeed came in immediately like a tsunami; I’d apparently been ready to carry a pair of milk jugs since I started learning long division. Breastfeeding was my physiologic destiny! Until my body betrayed me again when they were finally ready to serve their inherent function – alas, it’s hard to feed a baby when there’s nothing for the baby to latch onto. 

I became a milk factory, courtesy of my pink Spectra, and exclusively pumped for four months before my body dysmorphia and Dysphoric Milk Ejection Reflex (D-MER) rooted deep beneath the shadows of my postpartum anxiety. Who was I but a dairy diva piling bags of frozen milk in my freezer?

“Your body is a miracle,” I often heard, which is indeed a truth unfortunately knotted by the reality of simultaneously feeling like I wanted to unzip my skin and step into weightlessness. “I just need to move again,” I would tell myself. But my body was different and it moved differently, too. I wobbled unsteadily everywhere I walked. Breastfeeding also did not shrink my boobs; it made them even bigger, added weight pulling me down by two flappy pancakes tragically afflicted by gravitational forces beyond my control.

The first time I tried running postpartum, around nine months, I made it about ten driveways before I started hysterically crying. I was exhausted, but I was also fearful that I would give myself two black eyes before even rounding my street. Size check? 36J – like jug or joke or just you wait. I took to yoga and chasing my baby around the kitchen instead, trying to trust in time that one day I would reunite with my own bones. 

Months passed and I eventually fell into a natural rhythm with motherhood. My hormones stabilized and my scars healed and I rested more than I ever have in my life. At some point within the last few weeks, since my daughter has turned two, I have tip-toed into a new realization that my body doesn’t have to produce something to be worthy; not early maturity nor sex appeal nor milk. I don’t have to shrink or make moral judgments about my shapes. I can just be.

I do still wince upon hearing my daughter’s request for a dance party knowing that I will need to slip into a parachute harness to launch myself comfortably toward the sky. But when I do start jumping, she jumps higher. She sees me flailing my arms above my head in celebration of poppy toddler music and she celebrates everything about me in return, even when I don’t ask her to. 

“Purple bra!” She shrieks every morning, pulling it from my drawer and over her head. “Mommy boobies!” She points at me. I look at her tiny joyful face and feel like a star strutting through my bedroom getting dressed for a day full of little miracles. This body that she sees violently transformed to make her life but the version in front of her is all she will ever know. I don’t want her to feel fear or shame about what becomes of her own. I want her to name what she sees out loud, to take up space, and to let herself feel free.

I don’t want to shrink and shrivel anymore. Look what this body has done! Look how far it has come! I have a body and a daughter and a pair of giant boobs that flop when I walk, but I let the sound ricochet because it sounds like living. 

I jump and I run and I bobble and when I look in the mirror, I no longer flinch. 

Someone else is watching me now. 

I take up space to make more room for her – and I make no apologies.